udacity/cd15542-autonomous-marketing-exercises/sa-competitor-watch

Solstice Active — competitor watch

This Skill is read before any sweep runs. It answers two questions: which brands does the agent track, and how much weight does a move from each one carry. references/sa-competitor-list.md is the actual list; this file is the method.

Why tier before you search, not after

Deciding the tier boundaries up front is a triage habit, not a detail to fix later. If the agent searched everything with equal weight, it would spend the same drafting effort on a Tier 3 brand's minor press mention as a Tier 1 brand's product launch. Tiering first means the brief's structure — not just its search — already reflects what actually matters to Solstice's position.

Rule: a Tier 1 move outranks a Tier 3 move, even a bigger one. A Tier 1 competitor's small pricing tweak is more relevant to Solstice than a Tier 3 giant's major campaign, because Tier 1 is who Solstice's customer is actually choosing between. When two findings compete for space in the brief, tier wins over headline size.

How the tiers apply across all three source types

Every one of the three source types in .claude/agents/sa-market-intelligence-agent.md (Web Search, News, AI Citation Watch) reads the same list. A brand left off the list here never gets checked in any source — this is the single steering document for the whole sweep.

• Web Search / News: search each brand by name, and by parent

company where one exists — a lot of real news (pricing, ownership, distribution) breaks at the parent level.

• AI Citation Watch: when checking which brands an AI assistant

cites for a category question, cross-reference the answer against this same tiered list — a Tier 1 brand gaining or losing a citation matters more than a Tier 3 brand's citation status.

Scope

In scope: athleisure and performance-apparel brands sold at a comparable price point and channel to Solstice (DTC + select retail). Out of scope unless a brand crosses into that comparable price/channel position (see scoping notes in the list file for current judgment calls).

See references/sa-competitor-list.md for the current tiered set.